


Without Filters

by maddieisaboredable



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Fluff, High School!Jim Hopper, Jim Hopper x you, One Shot, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 08:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14445762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddieisaboredable/pseuds/maddieisaboredable
Summary: You and Hopper have been best friends since seventh grade. You can see right through his bullshit and that’s what he liked most about you. Through every relationship and every shitty situation, you were always there for each other. Now the junior prom was just around the corner and you both planned to keep your childhood promise of being each other’s date. That was until Ginger Peterson came into the picture. You tried not to be mad, but you absolutely were and something was telling you it wasn’t just because he had broken his promise.





	Without Filters

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Looking at you like what?”

You raise a brow at him while shoving books into your locker.

“You only look at me like that either when you want something or you did something. So which is it?”

Hopper grins and rolls his eyes as he turns his body away from you, leaning his back against the lockers next to yours. You get the few things you needed from your locker and slam it shut, hold the books against your chest and turn towards Hopper, waiting for an answer.

“Okay, okay, you got me, darlin’.”

He turns his gaze over to you and your irritated expression you didn’t keep from growing on your face.

“I was hoping you could help me write that paper for Mrs. Christy’s I-“

“No! Absolutely not!”

He leans off the lockers and turns his body towards yours.

“Please, I’m begging you, sweetheart. All I’m askin’ is for an outline and a simple, basic one at that. Just to get me started!”

“No, Hopper!”

You let out baffled laughs as you turn to walk down the hall to your class away from him, but he follows with his gaze still facing you as the two of you walked.

“Why not?”

He whined at you. You stop in your tracks and face him again.

“Because Jim, I offered to help you when it was assigned two weeks ago and you said you didn’t need it! That you’d ‘get around to it later.’”

“Well, now it’s later! Please, doll. Please, please, please, oh best friend o’ mine.”

He gets on his knees in front of you, bringing his hands up and together to beg you.

“Jesus. Fine, fine- I’ll throw something together during my next class. Now get your ass up, you’re embarrassing me!”

You grab his wrist to pull him up off the school tiles and he follows suit. He plants a sloppy kiss on your cheek and you push him back in disgust, wiping his spit off of your cheek aggressively.

“But you owe me, Jim!”

You yell out to him as he jogs the other direction down the hall to get to class relatively on time for once.

“Yeah, yeah!”

He yells back to you. You instinctually roll your eyes and head towards your class again.

Once all of your classes were over you headed out into the parking lot to look for Hopper. He was right where he always was, parked in ‘his’ spot, sitting in the driver’s seat of his dad’s Oldsmobile holding a lit cigarette out of his rolled down window. You sneak your way over to him and slam your hand down on top of the roof of the car. Jim drops his cig and clutches his chest as he jumps.

“Delivery!”

You throw the couple of papers with the outline you drew up for him into the window at him.

“Jesus, Y/N! You fucking scared the shit out of me! Nearly gave me a goddamn heart attack.”

You throw your head back to laugh at him as he shoves the papers into his bag that was sitting on the floor of the backseat. You walk around the front of his car, still giggling, and plop into his passenger seat, laying your bag on the floor in front of you.

“Didn’t know someone geriatric was taking me to the prom! Sure your back will be up for dancing next weekend? Wouldn’t want to cause your grandkids to be grandfather-less over the hand jive!”

He pushes at your shoulder.

“Ha, ha, very funny. You’re hilarious. And who said I was takin’ you to prom?”

“Um, you, dipshit? Havin’ memory problems, too? Maybe you really are geriatric.”

“Maybe I am, because I sure as hell don’t remember sayin’ that!”

You squint your eyes at him in disbelief.

“Hopper. Are you fucking serious? We’ve literally had this pact since we were kids. As soon as we’re able to go to prom, we’re going with each other. No matter what.”

Hopper’s eyes widen and then he rubs the back of his neck, averting his gaze from you.

“Shit.”

He breathes out as he falls back into his seat.

“Remember now, asshat? That’s fine, I forgive you. Just know my dress is red so your tie better match.”

He rolls his head over to face you, looking at you with sympathetic eyes.

“Please don’t hate me.”

You roll your eyes and fall back into your seat before rolling your head over to meet his gaze again.

“What’d ya owe me for now, Hop?”

“I maybe, kinda, sorta, told Ginger Peterson that I’d be takin’ her to prom. And we may or may not have hooked up in that seat your sittin’ in.”

You press the back of your head against the seat, plant your feet on the floor and arch your body so it’s not touching the leather interior.

“Ugh! You couldn’t have said something before I sat down!”

You squealed at him before eventually giving up and falling back in the seat to sit normally again.

“Maybe it might’ve been more than once. Maybe even more than 4.”

You squish your face up and squirm a little in the seat in disgust.

“You’re sick, Jim Hopper. Really sick.”

He laughs at you before leaning forward in his seat a bit.

“So, are you mad?”

“I mean, you did promise me! We spit and shook hands and everything!”

You cross your arms and huff at him. He links his fingers together and shoves them under his chin, giving you puppy-dog eyes.

“Please, I’m sorry, Y/N. Please forgive me!”

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling and turn your head abruptly away from him. His forehead falls on your shoulder and he wraps himself around your arm that was closest to him and starts tugging on it like a kid.

“Please, PLEASE, Y/N! I can’t LIVE with myself if you’re mad at me! I’ll do anything, please!”

He dramatically sobs at you. You purse your lips together, it getting harder to not smile as the grip on your arm tightens.

“Anything?”

You say without looking back at him. He turns his head back up and loosens his grip around your arm.

“Anything. Well, except be your date to prom. But if you need a kidney, it’s yours.”

You finally crack a laugh and turn your gaze back to him, shoving him off of you.

“I’ll be collecting on both of your debts then. Get me another date to prom AND let us tag along with you and your new best friend, Ginger.”

He holds open his hand and spits into his palm, holding it out for you to shake.

“Ew, I am not solidifying the deal like that.”

“You said that’s how we did it last time!”

“Well, you couldn’t keep your word when we shook on it like that, so!”

“Just fucking do it, Y/N.”

You roll your eyes at him for the billionth time today. He raises his outstretched hand slightly to encourage you some more. You groan but give in, spitting into your palm and quickly shaking Hopper’s wet hand.

“There. Now it’s final.”

He claims while beaming at you. You rip your hand from his and aggressively wipe it on your jeans.

“Gross. Maybe you’re not geriatric after all, because that was fucking childish.”

He sticks his tongue out at you and blows out a raspberry. You raise your eyebrows and let your mouth fall open a tad.

“Wow, I didn’t know they let third graders go to the prom?”

He tries to look offended but he can’t keep himself from laughing.

“Alright, alright, Peter Sellers, we get it. Now would you please get the fuck out of my car?”

Your jaw dropped further and you push out a huff.

“Hell no, rudeass! You’re driving me home now, after that!”

You cross your arms and turn away from him again. Hopper huffs at you and just starts his car and starts to drive without saying anything else. He probably was planning to give you a ride anyhow. You crank down your own window and let the wind overtake the silence in the car. You’ve been funny and playful this entire time but there was this pain gnawing at you ever since Hopper told you he was going to prom with Ginger instead of you. It only got worse when he said he’d hooked up with her too. You’d tried to just shrug it off; people forget stuff all the time. It’s not like you weren’t still going together. But the longer it sat there, the more unbearable it became. Hopper pulled up in front of your house and you get out before you finally speak up.

“Thanks for the ride, Jimmy.”

You bring up two fingers to give him a salute goodbye and start to turn away from him.

“I really am sorry, doll. I don’t like to make a habit of breaking promises. Especially not the one’s I make with you.”

Whatever had been giving you that gnawing sensation just took a bite down with teeth this time. You turned your head over to him and give him the warmest smile you can muster.

“It’s fine, Hop, really. Just tell Ginger she better not be plannin’ on wearin’ red.”

You winked at him and headed back towards your house. Your face suddenly gets heavy once you hear him drive away. You quicken up your pace to try and get to your room faster. You hear your mom greet you so you just yell some other generic greeting back, not stopping to chat with her further. You head into your room and quietly shut the door. As much as you wanted to slam it, you knew you’re mom would head in and try and ask you what was wrong. You knew what was wrong but there was no way in hell you were going to admit it, especially not to your mom. You drop your bag on the floor and fall face down into your bed.

Fuck, are you seriously that mad that he broke a stupid little middle school promise? You two probably won’t even stay two minutes at prom anyways! So why the hell are you so upset?

You knew why. Deep down, you really knew. You knew that you wanted to be Ginger Peterson for more reasons than one. But you could never tell Hopper that. And there’s no way he could ever feel the same way about you.

 

 

“Taylor Kirby? That’s who you picked?”

It took Hopper a whopping four days to find you a prom date. And even though Taylor was easy on the eyes, he had one of the absolute worst personalities. One of those, annoying-angsty-purist-artsy types. You know, the one’s that only smoke clove cigarettes and read Kerouac novels all the time; even at parties. Why would you even go to a party if you’re just going to sit and read?

“Why, what’s wrong with Taylor Kirby?”

Hopper asks behind you as you scan the library shelves for books. You stand up on your toes to tap the bottom of the spine of a book you need that’s too high for you to reach for Hopper to grab for you.

“You know what’s wrong with Taylor Kirby.”

Hopper groans and easily plucks the book off of the shelf. He doesn’t hand this one to you though, as your hands are dangerously full of books already. He simply follows you as you make your way to a table to dump all of them on so you two can start studying.

“Well I told him that you hated The Catcher in the Rye and he fell in love, so you’re going with him. Or he’s coming with us, I guess.”

You drop your books down onto a table and a roar of shushes comes at you from the other patrons in the library, making you wince.

“You what? The Catcher in the Rye is my fucking favorite book, you jackass! You know this!”

You whisper yell at him as the two of you sit down. You start to aggressively dig through your bag, pulling out things you’ll need to study.

“I know, that I know this! But he’s all ‘I hate what’s popular’ and you’ve practically written all of my literary analysis papers and I’ve gotten A’s on all of them! You know the content so I’m sure you can come up with some bullshit as to why it’s actually terrible!”

You stop searching in your bag and shush him, as his volume grows louder. He leans in closer to you.

“And he said he knows a spot he can take us by the quarry where some people are going to be during and after.”

He whisper yells back to you. You can feel your face starting to get hot in anger and frustration.

“Oh cool, so you’re just selling me out so you can have a new party location.”

“It’s not like I’m asking you to fuck him or anything!”

Hopper says at a regular volume, but in the silent library he may as well have screamed it. You start to shove your things back into your bag.

“Wow. Awesome. Thanks, Hop.”

You shove yourself out of your chair and try to walk away but Hopper stands in front of you.

“Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I mean I did mean that, I’m not asking you to fuck him, but I-“

“It’s fine. Just- gimmie a day, I’ll get over it.”

“Y/N-“

You push yourself past him, tears threating to fall from your eyes. Did he really think that little of you? That you’re only some pawn for him to use to get higher up the food chain? You burst into the nearest bathroom and lock yourself in a stall. You sit down on the toilet and let your head fall into your hands as you let the tears fall from your eyes and the sobs fall from your mouth. You could deal with him not liking you. You could deal with him not wanting you like he wants Ginger. But this? Him pretending to be your best friend to get what he wants was a whole different, more painful, kind of heartbreak. You hear the bathroom door open so you sit up and throw a hand over your mouth. You wait for whoever walked in to finish up so you could get back to your breakdown, but they stand in front of your stall.

“Y/N?”

Hopper gently knocks on the stall door.

“Hopper you can’t be in here.”

You try and keep yourself from sniffling; you really don’t want him to know that you were crying.

“Then just let me in! Please, Y/N. I just want to talk.”

You reluctantly stand up and ease towards the lock on the door. But you quickly unlock it, grab Hopper’s shirt and pull him against you when you hear the bathroom door open again. Hopper lets out a quiet laugh but you throw a hand over his mouth. You’d say you’d never thought about what Jim’s lips felt like but if you did you’d most certainly be lying. Except this time was different. This time your heart ached feeling him so close to you. You hear girls who came in start giggling and then rush out of the bathroom. You look down and remember that you can still see two sets of feet through the gap under the stall. Hopper starts to laugh again against your hand. His warm breath against your skin makes you pull your hand down and push as far away from him as you can. It hurts being close to him. And not just because of how he treated you in the library.

“Y/N, I’m sorry. I was an ass back there. I just got frustrated because you were shooting everything down! You weren’t listening to me! I didn’t use you to get us to the spot to the quarry, I’m using him!”

You raise your brow slightly at him and cross your arms in front of you. He lets out a long sigh in an attempt to get his thoughts together since they had been all scrambled up during your argument earlier.

“You know we’re not going to spend more than five minutes at prom and I wanted us to hang out somewhere different than we usually do! I wanted it to be special, okay? I don’t give a shit about prom; I really don’t even give a shit about Ginger that much, I only care about hanging out with you! You’re my best friend, Y/N!”

You smirk a little but stay tense until he’s finished his spiel. It wasn’t too hard since it stung to hear him say that you were just his best friend.

“So please forgive me, because I wasn’t kidding that one time I said I couldn’t live with myself if you were mad at me.”

He takes a half step closer to you.

“I’m not mad at you. I-“

He wraps his arms around you and pulls you in for a big squeeze.

“Oh, thank god.”

“Hopper, I can’t breathe.”

You squirm under him until he eases up his grip. You’re incredibly aware of his hands lingering on the sides of your arms and how close he is still standing to you once he pulls away from the hug.

“I forgive you. I’m sorry I didn’t listen, I’m just stressed is all.”

He starts to rub up and down your bicep with his thumb. You take in a sharp, quiet breath at this motion.

“About what?”

He looks down at you sympathetically. You want to tell him. You want to tell him everything so badly.

“Just school stuff. Goodman’s test.”

But you just couldn’t.

He gives you a pat on the shoulder.

“Whatever, you’ll do fine. You always do. Now, would this be a bad time to tell you that Ginger is, in fact, wearing red?”

Your eyes go wide and your jaw drops.

“Are you serious? Well I hope she has a fucking backup dress!”

Hopper throws his head back to laugh at you.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Jesus, for someone who’s only gonna be at prom for five minutes, you should do care a lot about what you’re wearing.”

“It only takes five minutes to get pictures taken and steal the jungle juice. And I’m not leaving until I get my picture taken, whether you’re in the photo or not.”

“Oh, I’ll be in it. Awkward pose and everything.”

He winks at you before unlocking and leaving the stall, you following right behind him. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe it was for the best that you don’t tell him. Your heart drops into your stomach when you think about losing him. Especially if it’s over some stupid confession you’d make to him. So you crammed it down, kept it in, and used all your strength to ignore your feelings for Hopper. But it’s a lot easier said than done.

 

It was 8:16 and you were starting to think that Hopper might have given Taylor the wrong address. You sat on your couch downstairs, bouncing your leg in impatience. You glance back up at the clock and then back out at your empty driveway. You groan and shove yourself off of the couch and head into the kitchen to call Hopper. But before you could dial you hear someone pull up. You head over to the window and see Taylor in his car. You wait a moment for him to get out but he doesn’t. You wait a minute longer but he just honks his horn. You blow out a long sigh before heading out the door. You wave at him once you step outside and he simply raises two fingers from off of his steering wheel to wave back at you.

“Alright.”

You mutter under your breath before getting into Taylor’s car.

 

The entire car ride was completely silent other than the spoken word album that was playing over the radio. Not that there is anything wrong with listening to spoken word, it’s just probably not the best for playing when other people are in the car. And if you do make that choice, then maybe choose a spoken word album that isn’t in German.

“So, do you speak German?”

“No, why would you ask that?”

You blink slowly at him but he hasn’t paid attention to you at all since you got in the car.

“Just wondering.”

 

Your group actually stayed much longer than any of your expected too. You took a million pictures together, some stupid, some serious, and some really sweet ones. You even danced. The intro of Love Me Tender started playing and your eyes immediately met with Hopper’s. You both even started to walk towards each other until Ginger grabbed his hand to pull him to the dance floor. You scanned around the room for Taylor even though you knew he wouldn’t dance with you. So you just watched. Watched Ginger and Hopper, hips touching, arms wrapped around each other, swaying around in circles as Elvis’s smooth voice stabbed knives into your heart. But after the “you have made my life complete”, you spun around to leave. You couldn’t take it anymore. You felt like you couldn’t breathe, and you were not going to let yourself cry. That bottle holding up your feelings started to bubble up, dangerously close to blowing up inside of you. You burst out of the front doors and take in slow, deep, breaths once outside. You turn your head towards the voices coming from the wall next to you and spot Taylor among the group with his signature clove cigarette in his hand. You stride over to him. Enduring a conversation with him seemed much more bearable at the moment.

“Need a light?”

You ask him. You couldn’t think of anything else to say. He shakes his head and pulls out his own lighter. You lean against the wall next to him as he lights up his cig.

“We headed out soon?”

He asks you.

“I think so. Just waiting for Hopper and Ginger now, I guess.”

He nods and takes in a drag. Clove cigarettes smell much better than Hopper’s camels.

“So, Catcher in the Rye?”

He asks you.

“Fucking hate that book.”

You cross the space between the two of you and crash your lips onto his. He drops his cigarette and rests his hands on your waist. He pulls you closer to him and you bring one hand up to the back of his head to deepen the kiss in an attempt to make this feel better. It felt fine. Just fine. But almost wrong. And you. Knew. Why. He wasn’t Hopper. Not even close. You thought if you kissed him, you could cram it down further or that it would get easier to. Or at the very least you could distract yourself. God, you hadn’t even thought about what you’re going to do once your get to the quarry. Ginger and Hopper are no doubt going to be all over each other and there’s no way you could kiss Taylor again. Kissing him was just as bad as talking to him. Luckily he pulls his mouth away from yours when you both hear the front doors open.

“Hey are you-“

You turn your head over to Hopper and Ginger. Hopper coughs sharply.

“Are you guys ready to head out?”

You step away from Taylor and make your way towards his car.

“Y/N, wait-“

“Just follow me. It’s about a 15-minute drive.”

You pass by Ginger and notice that her arms are tightly crossed over her body and her face is flushed. You don’t think anything of it and climb into Taylor’s car.

 

You have no idea if the ride was 3 hours or 3 minutes because you were shut down and numb the entire time. You have no idea how else to keep yourself at bay. Maybe you should’ve told him. You’ve pushed too much down and bottled it up too tightly that it hurts. And seeing Hopper with Ginger again may just break you. But when you get out to walk towards the small group of people surrounding a small fire you spot Hopper walking alone. You head closer to his direction, it much less unbearable to be around just him. Well, it still hurt but at least he’s not pressed up against Ginger anymore.

“What happened to Ginger?”

He jumped slightly since you sort of snuck up on him, abandoning Taylor.

“Oh, she-uh- she wasn’t feeling to hot, so she got a ride home with someone.”

You raise a brow up at him but he doesn’t look at you. He simply gently wraps his arm around your shoulder to guide you over to sit on one of the logs in front of the fire with him.

“Well, is she okay?”

“What? Oh, yeah, she’ll be fine. Where’s –uh- where’s Taylor?”

He asks you as he pulls out his box of cigarettes.

“Don’t know, don’t care. We’re here now, so he’s useless to us.”

You tease at him and he lets out a few quiet laughs. Your chest was still aching but being with Hopper you just felt so comfortable. Everything just came so easy. Everything was comfortable but not boring. Hopper starts to flick his lighter to light up his cigarette.

“Can I have one?”

“What, a cig? Are you sure? There’s no filters on ‘em.”

“I know that, dipshit. Best friend, remember? And yes, I’m sure. I forgot to steal punch at the dance and I need something.”

He smirks before tapping the box against the side of his leg so a cig sticks out of the box for you to grab. You grab the air to signal for him to hand you the lighter before he offers to light it for you. He hands it to you once he’s done lighting his and watches you as you light up your own. You barely singe the tip but as soon as you get the smallest amount of smoke in your lungs you start coughing hard. Hopper starts to laugh at you.

“I tried to warn you!”

“Jesus, you really are sick! That was way too strong, fuck!”

You say as you cough in between every few words. 

“Here, give me that.”

You hand him your cig and he tosses it into the fire.

“What are you-“

“Just trust me, alright. Open your mouth a little.”

You raise a brow at him but do as he says. He takes a long drag of his cigarette in before leaning dangerously close to you, his lips practically touching yours. Hopper starts to blow the smoke into your mouth and you inhale it into your lungs, the burn much easier to handle this time. Your eyes flutter closed but Hopper’s stay glued on your face. Even once he was done and you had exhaled, he still hadn’t moved his face any further away from yours. You slowly opened your eyes to meet his. You wish you could blame the nicotine on your slight high you felt right now, but you knew that wasn’t the case. But then that tight feeling came rushing back, the bottle still had on its lid.

“I’m sorry- I- I have to- um.”

You pull away from him and get up from the log you had been sitting on. You start to walk as fast as you could away from Hopper. You’re face was no longer flush from your feelings for Hopper; they were flush because you were angry. You got pretty far away from the crowd; so much so that you couldn’t hear them chattering anymore and the light had faded around you. But you kept going, your hot cheeks cooling under the tears that were falling down your face.

“Y/N, wait!”

You kept going, ignoring Hopper jogging to catch up to you.

“Y/N! Fucking, stop!”

He grabs your arm and spins you around.

“No, you fucking stop, Hopper! You can’t just- do shit like that, okay? Why the fuck would you think that was okay?”

“Wha-what are- I mean I don’t know I-“

“You’re right, you don’t know! You don’t know what that shit does to me! You don’t know what you do to me!”

You knew you should probably stop but now that the flow has started; there was just no way you could.

“You have no idea how bad it hurts, Hopper. It’s bad enough I had to watch you and Ginger and hear about Ginger and sit in the seat where you and Ginger had fucked- like I get it Hopper! You don’t want me! But I want you, okay? So you can’t just-“

Hopper cuts you off by grabbing your arm again to pull you against him, crashing his lips into yours. You tense up in surprise at first but immediately relax when he starts to wrap himself around you. His hands trail all over you and your hands trail all over him, you’ve both wanted this. You both pull away, out of breath, but lips still hovering over each other’s as you take in heavy breaths, both of your eyes still clamped shut.

“I do. I do want you. I have always wanted you. I was just-“

“Scared. Me too.”

Your eyes flutter back open and you pull a bit further away, just enough to see each other’s faces. Hopper brings a hand up to your cheek and runs over your warm skin with his thumb.

“I just wasn’t sure you’d go for anyone like me. And I didn’t want to ruin what we had. So I just-“

You put your hand over his mouth. He takes the hand on your cheek to press your palm into his lips. You smile warmly at him and move the hand over to rest on his cheek.

“But now we know.”

He grins.

“Now we know.”

He leans his face down and presses his lips softly back onto yours


End file.
